Venetian Islands

A visit to Venice shouldn’t just be the city itself and the canals. Venice has a whole lot of islands around it in the bay and while some of them are deserted others are quite lovely to visit and have thriving communities on them. Yesterday we went to Murano. Going to Murano means looking at glass, lots of glass. It was quite nice to do that plus the prices there are a tiny bit cheaper than buying glass in Venice. What’s interesting is there are signs there saying “no Chinese glass here”. Wow, hadn’t even realized it was a problem. I think that we didn’t buy Chinese glass yesterday. I’m hoping we didn’t anyway.
Today we decided to go to Burano. It is smaller but it is just as lovely or possibly even more so. Many of the houses there are very brightly painted. We talked to some people who said that in times past, the houses and the boats were painted the same colors. When fishermen came home in the dark or fog, OR had a bit too much to drink, they could find their house because they could match the color to their boats. The lace industry used to be very big there. Of course it has disappeared over the years but it is slowly making a comeback. We didn’t price any lace but it is probably expensive. Hand made lace always is. I’m not much of a lace person so wasn’t really interested in getting any. We did find some very nice clothes though that were quite expensive. Heavy sigh! The nice stuff always is!
It was a very pleasant day although coming across the bay was foggy and made the other islands appear as if they were floating between the sea and sky. Great illusions. Once back we had an Italian favorite, some gelato. Now it’s time to pack up and my husband goes back to work tomorrow and I move east again, to Romania.